


Come to the Well.

by Zigzagwanderer



Series: Tomorrow was our Golden Age. [11]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Hair, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 14:03:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14082549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigzagwanderer/pseuds/Zigzagwanderer
Summary: Will and Hannibal are together in the Sarvia Archipelago, in the chilly Baltic, after surviving the Fall. They have healed, but are still learning how to live, in their pseudonyms of Thomas and Eirik Buckley. This is just fluff really, to offset the angst to come! Comes before 'Dreams are like Water', I would say, in this series. I haven't edited it at all and tried to do 1000 words. So its rough and probably not ready, but its just something I wanted to try out. Let me know what you think!





	Come to the Well.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks once more to everyone who has read my fics. I really appreciate you all. xxxxxx

Of course, it is Ernesta that stirs the pot. 

“So, Thom, where is Leif Longhair today?”

Will grunts at Ernesta from beneath the engine. He lets her weirdness slide. After all, she is ninety if she’s a day. He finishes replacing the oil filter and ignores her ribald commentary on how practised he is with prop shaft and head-surfaces.  
He accepts a shot of the house liquor in his coffee. 

Ernesta and Hannibal have that in common; an aptitude for distillation. 

“Eirik’s off to Skammhal, sketching,” he tells her; people tell Ernesta what she wants to know, eventually. “Mrs Geit told him about some outbuildings on her island, and y’know Eirik…loves drawing anything architectural. Even some crappy old cow-sheds.”  
Ernesta shifts a sack of meal as if was a feather pillow. “Yes,” she snorts. “I imagine even young widow Geit knows that much about him. And one cannot live here without knowing how to bait a hook.”  
She continues to make up the Vakkrehejm order, navigating her labyrinthine store despite worsening vision and chronic arthritis. She puts in treats Hannibal doesn’t approve of, let alone ask for, candies and folksy aphrodisiacs and the like. Hannibal never corrects her. 

Will helps her pack the maple syrup. He is speculating enjoyably to himself, wondering what he would need to do to get pancakes for dinner. Then he realises that Ernesta is grinning at him, the wrinkled old troll.  
“What?” He says rudely.  
“Katja Gait has already buried two Norwegians, the lusty hen. It is as they say; taste is like the buttocks; some like the left, some the right. And as far as us Sarvians are concerned, you just can’t beat a Viking in your bed.” 

 

Will doesn’t give her ramblings much thought until he next sees Hannibal splitting logs. They burned desiccated sticks in the desert, after Will pulled them off a cliff; their fires were mere puddles of blue-green sand-flame. Here, the hearth of their little white house is a hungry wolf, feeding continuously and voraciously, while in return spewing out roaring whirlpools of earth-red and gold. 

So, one or other of them is almost always working at the block.

And when Will actually sidles out to the back porch and looks, it turns out that, of course, Ernesta is right. 

Hannibal has taken off Eirik’s neat, dark-blue shirt and wears only a singlet. He is lean and sinewy and sweating. Arms. Shoulders. Chest. He swings the axe, and his locks swing too, across his fierce-boned face, silver metal and silver strands glinting like the ice dripping off the sunlit eaves of the woodstore. 

Leif Longhair, indeed. 

Will waits until they are in the bath, his legs spread around Hannibal’s hips.  
He rinses Hannibal’s back. It is too good, this wide expanse, this tundra of muscle and scar, Will’s dominion alone, and he almost forgets what he was about to say.  
That is Hannibal’s natural camouflage; he is a man with too many distracting facets, too many wondrous elements, so that even when he is not actively trying to bedazzle it is hard to make out the complete design. 

But, Will has natural advantages too, such as a troublesome curiosity.

“Always thought you hated to grow your hair?” Will pushes Hannibal’s head down, to scrub at the nape of his neck. “Never again, 'the veil atop the weeds of institutionalisation', I believe you said?”  
“Untidy.” Hannibal mutters into the petalled water, a soothed savage.  
“Well, I could cut it for you?” Will examines with the very tips of his fingers, sliding and massaging at the scalp. “Got some shears in the workshop.” 

In truth, the sides and back of Hannibal’s skull are still velveted with an intoxicating stubble, it is just the top which is being allowed to become a lengthening forest of bark-colours. 

“Disguise.” Hannibal says, none too distinctly, pushing backwards into Will.  
“You do look…different,” Will agrees, gripping with his knees. 

And it is a reasonable answer, from a federal fugitive, so why, as Hannibal abruptly hauls Will out of the tub, across the landing and onto their bed, does Will get the feeling that it’s not the right one?

 

The beard is lost to the razor, just to give Will’s skin some respite from the constant abrasion, and Hannibal starts to have to tie up the top of his hair for cooking and rowing.  
It is, to Will, such an unconsciously cute and appealingly practical style, that his bottom lip begins to suffer from the symptoms of frustrated gnawing just as the inside of his thighs begin to heal some.

It is to Hannibal, however, abhorrent. 

Will sees his minute shudder whenever they pass a mirror. Hannibal is not vain of his outward appearance, that is simply a mask and a tool, but longer hair than he preferred was not the only indignity he endured at BSHCI, and with Hannibal, memory is practically an extra sense.

But still the shears are not requested. 

A mystery, but amid all the other fathoming and soul-searching and careful negotiating of those first months, it is not one to give Will nightmares.

And the answer, when it comes, is actually the stuff of a different kind of dream.

“Harder, if you wish.” Hannibal tells Will nicely, during one sweet dawn.  
Will is pretty busy, as well as balancing precariously, so cannot quite work out which part in where Hannibal means. 

“Unless you no longer...desire it?” Hannibal is breathless yet also heart-breakingly earnest.  
“Huh?”  
Hannibal puts his hand over Will’s hand, which is unconsciously tangled up in Hannibal’s hair.  
“You pull more as you near the end.” Hannibal whispers. 

Eyes narrowed, and disbelieving, Will gives a sharp tug.  
The delicious shiver shakes both of them.  
It is _so_ good, but there are other things to consider. Dignity. Give-and-take. 

“My only desire is you.” Will says, seeing Hannibal as a complete design. Long-suffering. Loving. He lets go of Longhair and weaves his fingers with Hannibal’s own instead. “Tomorrow we get out those shears.”


End file.
